Live wire

Thirty-two years on, high-wire artiste Philippe Petit is helping the Nottingham Playhouse dramatise his walk between the World Trade Center's twin towers. Erlend Clouston finds the cast and crew in high spirits

Up to the wire... Philippe Petit (right) helps actor Dodger Phillips find his feet in rehearsals for To Reach the Clouds, Nottingham Playhouse. Photograph: Drew Baumohl

How do you create a sense of height in a theatre? More importantly, how do you reproduce the particular sensation associated with moving along an extremely narrow and quivering surface over a sheer drop of 1,350 feet?

The answer involves an assortment of two-dimensional multimedia clouds, a large mirror, and a cable suspended 12 inches above the stage floor. "We had a lot of rigging guys up to show us what we could do in the theatre," recalls Giles Croft. "But it didn't feel right. We'd end up doing a circus act, completely at odds with Philippe's philosophy."

Croft is the artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse, which from June 17 to July 8 presents a dramatised adaptation of To Reach the Clouds, high-wire artiste Philippe Petit's account of his audacious 1974 traverse of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. A significant part of the audacity was Petit's failure to give advance notice of his intention to the WTC authorities.

Both projects share a serendipitous genesis. Petit hit on his idea when he saw a newspaper illustration of the projected structures in his dentist's waiting room in Paris. Three decades later Giles Croft was reading To Reach the Clouds on the London underground when he encountered an old friend, the poet Nick Drake. By the time the pair reached Embankment station, a deal had been struck that Drake would write the adaptation and Croft would direct.

Nottingham is a rather appropriate home for the play. To reach the theatre from the station you stroll up Maid Marian Way and past the Robin Hood Experience. Petit's life story - gallant, authority-defying adventurer who starts life being expelled from five schools and cut off by his immediate family, but ends up a folk hero and even appointed as a Chevalier de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French culture minister - is the stuff of outlaw legend.

The production also offers the now US-based Petit some redress for his British sponsors' last-minute retreat from a planned 2005 walk over the river Tyne. If it is flattering to have your personal epic repackaged for nightly public consumption and admiration, it must be intoxicating to be invited aboard the project as official consultant.

"Don't look at the audience," Petit, a pale, sharp-nosed figure with a resonant voice and enormous forearms bulging out of a sleeveless black T-shirt, urges Dodger Phillips, the actor with the uncomfortable job of playing his instructor. "That is show-business," he scoffs. "Remember, instead, you are a vildcat, a magic kid!"

Petit is 57 now, but still has much of the urchin flexibility that enabled him to transfer safely from the vertical to the horizontal halfway into his 110 storey-high trespass. Inviting him to come Nottingham for three days was, one senses, a calculated gamble by Croft. On the one hand there was Petit's intimate knowledge of the individuals and techniques deployed in what he calls "the artistic crime of the century".

On the other, there was the possibly destabilising impact of the Frenchman's powerful personality on the fragile nexus of words and human beings making up a dramatic production. Playwright Nick Drake, a gentle, crop-haired man sitting on the rehearsal studio's blue sofa, has already had to redraft his script three times to accommodate objections. Philippe's cooperation was only finally secured by the concept of the cloud-rich setting for the climactic walk.

"What Philippe did can never happen again," muses Croft, whose dark swept-back locks and saucer-sized spectacles give him the air of an intellectual flamenco dancer. "So this idea of him in space, unconnected to anything, said a lot to me."

Petit, meanwhile, is in the centre of the studio, tutoring the actors in conjuring. His book, and the script, has himself and a US immigration official exchanging card tricks. Petit now suggests that ropework might make more of an impression on the audience. "You have to find a fluidity," he instructs Phillips as the cord slithers like spaghetti between his fingers. "You go zere, you turn, and you pull!" Giles and Nick watch, poker-faced, from the sidelines. One feels for the youthful-looking 44-year-old Phillips, for whom this is a first lead role, as he vainly attempts to manipulate his rope with the required subtlety.

"OK, you got the idea," booms Petit. "That's beautiful. Now you must practise!" It is clear that we are witnessing a re-run of the flattery, cajoling and pleading that persuaded a motley crew of international volunteers to participate in the WTC adventure.

Almost as extraordinary as Petit's precarious odyssey is the fact that it has taken 32 years to be publicly recreated in this way. The true story of a vagabond street performer deploying umpteen disguises, erratic accomplices and half a ton of cable to defy security guards, weather, gravity and the law of probability should have been irresistible to audiences.

The explanation lies buried in the nature of the deed itself. For Petit it was not an act of bravado but an act of artistry over which he wished to exercise a degree of proprietorial control. Over the years, he said later, he had turned down dozens of proposals for documentaries, films and plays.

"This is the first time I have collaborated. Why? Because of the reputation of the Nottingham Playhouse and because of the agreement of their people to work closely with me." Petit's non-commercial principles - he has refused endorsements for any of his 70 high-wire walks - obliges him to lead a more constrained lifestyle than one would suppose of man whose achievements have been feted by, among others, Norman Mailer, Werner Herzog, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Sue Lawley (he graced Desert Island Discs on April 10, 2004).

"The last few years have been my lowest of the low," he confided gloomily. "High wire does not make a living. I rely on my creativity, my writing, my talks." Petit charges $12,000 (£6,500) for a motivational speech to corporations, half that sum for educational organisations. The latest of his five books, The Art of the Pickpocket, has just appeared in France. In their break the British actors appear awe-struck by the self-confidence of the Gallic apparition who has erupted in their midst.

"We're not very good at that in this country, saying 'I'm a very good juggler'," notes one. "He doesn't try to make you like him, which I find quite refreshing," remarks another. "By the end of the afternoon I was quite charmed by him," declares Sally Evans, who plays Philippe's erstwhile girlfriend, Annie. Dodger Phillips, a sometime street performer himself (though never above 25 feet), admitted to being "a little daunted" by the experience of meeting someone whose exploits he has long admired. Not short on confidence either, Phillips wrote to Croft proposing himself for the main role the moment he heard the project was in the wind. The director's hope is that his production will have a life beyond Nottingham; contacts from European and New York theatres have been invited to inspect the show.

"It will be a very important work," predicted Petit. In the rehearsal studio he teaches Phillips how to perform the Boomerang Card. "I saw in your resumé that you do karate; so, it is a similar move!" Petit crouches, flexes the card and flicks his wrist. The flimsy rectangle soars out over the void, curves gently, and swirls back safely to his hand.

· To Reach the Clouds is at Nottingham Playhouse, June 17-July 8. Box office: 0115-941 9419